Phillip Hampton

Phillip Jewel Hampton was born April 23, 1922, in Kansas City, Missouri to Cordell Daniels and Wilma Jones. Raised in the home of Eliza B. Hampton-Sisemore and her daughter Wilma, a school teacher, young Phillip spent the years of the Great Depression moving from school to school as his sponsor moved through a variety of teaching appointments as they became available.
Phillip's interest in artistic endeavors came at an early age. The blinds at his childhood home provided the first substrate for his artistic inspiration and while these efforts were chastised, the supportive relatives with whom he lived nurtured his interest in artistic expression.
After yearly moves between 1928 and 1941, Hampton entered Citrus Junior College in Glendora, California, where he majored in art. In 1943 he was inducted into the U.S. Army and served two years in World War II, culminating in his participation in day 12 of the DDay invasion of Omaha Beach in France.. A decorated Staff Sergeant, Hampton survived five military campaigns, including the Battle of the Bulge. For each of these engagements he received a campaign star. In 1946, Hampton entered Kansas State College, in Manhattan, Kansas on the G.I. Bill, where he attended scientific, engineering and other technical drawing classes. Not satisfied with the program, he moved to Des Moines, Iowa in 1948 to study at Drake University. Phillip chose Drake because he had heard that his first choice, the Art Institute in Kansas City, was not receptive to African-American students. It was during this time that his entry in the Latham Foundation International Poster Contest won him a prize. In 1948, Hampton returned to Kansas City, where he worked at the Thompson Hayward Chemical Company and enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute, who had now begun to accept all who were qualified. In 1950, he enrolled in the academic courses at the University of Kansas City. There he completed a BFA degree in illustration and qualifications in secondary education in 1951 and a Master's Degree in 1952. His Master's thesis painting was an allegorical opus on the subject of happiness.
Already active in the arts community, Hampton participated in many exhibitions, including a group exhibition of African-American artists in 1951. Although Hampton's early works were characterized by an interest in perception and the realities and aesthetics of the world around him, a shift began to take place in the 1960s when he began to investigate abstraction. Abstraction in African-American art has a cultural history that is born out of a reaction against social realist trends of the 1930s. As it grew in the late 40s and early 1950s, the move by artists to abstraction also signaled a desire for integration rather than segregation.He found abstraction to be infinitely satisfying because it allowed him to break free of representational constraints. With abstraction, he could address philosophical concerns without being bound to specific narratives or didactic ideas.
Although much of his work today remains free of overt political messages, there were singular moments in his career in which Hampton addressed issues of race and civil rights in American life. During the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and before, Phillip Jewel Hampton created a number of works that spoke directly of his thoughts and experiences on issues of race and discrimination. Four notable works We Were Served Slices of Mythical Iconography, Like T. Sawyer and B. Sambo (1972); a mixed media work titled Funky Rainbow Series (1982), which was part of his Plastigraphs research project and combined printmaking, collage and an acrylic substrate; An Autobiography of Another American, 1972; and a shaped canvas titled We Watched the Ritual of the No-Magic Mask, 1973.
His art responded to his experiences as a black man in a white society. It was made both in protest to the volatile and deadly events that defined the early days of the civil rights movement and to create "a new way of expressing an artistic idea."
Throughout his career Hampton also took an active role in the promotion of African-American artists, writing catalogues and articles and organizing a number of survey exhibitions on the theme. A founding member of the National Conference of Artists, a group that supports African American artists still active today, Hampton served as a quiet but effective presence in the promotion of artists of color.
In 1972, Hampton participated on the panel Contemporary Black Art Philosophy and Thought with co-panelists Mary Washington, collector Caroline Stokes, University of Southern California professor Carlton Westbrooks and artist Nelson Stevens from Northern Illinois University. In the same year, he also organized Existence/Black: An Exhibition of African-American Artists, featuring a group of nationally recognized artists for Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. A quiet, reticent man, Hampton today prefers not to make overt political statements about the condition of African Americans in society. Instead, the artist provides subtle commentaries which celebrate the African-American experience both intellectually and emotionally through abstract, visual means.
In 1969, Hampton was instrumental in a major expansion of Savannah State College's art program and its facilities.In the same year, he was courted by Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE and eventually moved his family to Edwardsville in the fall of 1969.
At SIUE, Hampton taught undergraduate courses in printmaking, design and painting. In these and panel discussions, writing articles and conducting workshops. In 1970, Hampton was the focus of a one-person exhibit at Mark Twain Bank in St. Louis. Through this exhibition, Hampton's acrylic and collage paintings, Tenacious Soul and Boy in Alice's Now Land (both 1970), entered the bank's collection.
In 1992 upon his retirement from SIUE, Phillip Hampton was honored with the title of Professor Emeritus. A well-loved educator, he has served as a great mentor to his students throughout his career.
On a personal level, Phillip was a very strong, thoughtful, considerate, caring and supportive man who gave freely and expected nothing in return and who cherished the tiniest gesture of appreciation. His unconditional and quietly supportive and humorous nature will be greatly missed.
Phillip was married to Dorothy Smith. They raised two sons, Harry Hampton and Keith Hampton. He was preceded in death by his parents, his wife, his son Keith, his brother Raymond Daniels.
Phillip made his transition, December 17, 2016. He leaves to mourn his son, Harry Hampton, granddaughters, Noel (Raffeal) Tenner, Nicole (Gregory) Dorsey, grandson, Phillip (Wing Leung) Hampton and their mother Gloria Hampton, great, grandchildren Malik Hampton, Ore Tenner, his extended family, companion for over 23 years, Johnetta Randolph Haley, her daughter, Karen Louise Douglas, and her grandson, Jonathan Haley (Jessica) Douglas, her great-grandson Braylon Douglas, and a host of other relatives and friends.